Now for 2-3 weeks is Sea Run Season on my home water. I never wetted a line, last year, and have not been following their status there for years, as I do not fish enough to know now. It was a little early on Monday, the 4th, but I was curious and went to check for a half hour at dusk. I tried a couple of dependable pools and took a 16 inch brown at the first and a 13 incher at the next. I was a bit surprised as I have never seen browns that early there before. I have always worried browns were expanding their range in my water. As a kid, I never saw them in the upper part of the river. Slowly, they became more noticeable. I saw parr, and even spawning, on occasion but hoped it was minor. They have dominated other rivers in the area but my stream seemed to be a refuge for sea run brook trout. Browns are a great fish but they stress and compete with brook trout. I used to run a campaign of extraction on the browns but these two were lightly hooked and I released them. I don’t get as excited by catching trout, as I used to, but one thing that never gets old is how beautiful they are. When I handled the fish, I was enraptured at how like living jewels they are.
As stunning as the browns were, it is still sea run brooks that dazzle me most. It was rare for me to get them as fresh as the one above and those fine specks of light along the back were what I looked for. The sea run colors faded quickly in 2 weeks, or so, but the guanine scales, on the back, lasted longest. Half way through the transition is when I often got them. The result was spectacular. The resident colors combined with the remaining silver specks of light is burned into my soul. Cormac McCarthy, said it well.
“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road